The Met Police is reviewing 9,000 cases in a massive new grooming gangs probe amid criticism of Sadiq Khan’s claims that none operated in the capital.
The Mayor of London has repeatedly denied that his city was blighted by the kinds of child abuse seen in towns such as Rochdale and Rotherham.
However, this week reports emerged from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) of young girls being raped.
And on Friday, the Met Police revealed it has thousands of cases to reassess spanning the past 15 years.
Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has now told Mr Khan in a letter how he was ‘responding to questions about child sexual exploitation’.
It marks a U-turn from Sir Mark’s previous comments suggested he had not seen indications of Rochdale-or Rotherham-style grooming gangs in the capital.
Yet he has more recently suggested to the London Assembly that there was a ‘very significant’ number of multi-offender cases that would need probing again.
Now London’s top cop has stated that ‘any sexual offending against children is abhorrent but group-based offending, including that characterised as “Grooming Gangs”, is particularly insidious’.
Sadiq Khan (pictured) has been accused of helping ‘cover up’ abuse by London grooming gangs
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said his force is ‘committed’ to safeguarding victims and ‘bringing those responsible to justice’
He said his force was ‘committed’ to safeguarding victims and ‘bringing those responsible to justice’, in a letter seen by the Express.
The HMICFRS’s reports suggested six potential victims had been identified, with girls as young as 13 being preyed upon by grooming gangs.
Two victims were mentioned in a report in February this year on the Met’s ‘handling of the sexual and criminal exploitation of children’, according to an investigation by the Express and MyLondon.
One was a 15-year-old girl missing for four days before being found with a man aged 21 and she then told officers of being raped by ‘numerous men’.
The other was a girl aged 13 said to be at high risk, with officers identifying two men that were suspected of sexually exploiting her.
The previous February, HMICFRS’s equivalent report found a social worker told of a 15-year-old girl being coerced to go to a hotel where she was given drugs and alcohol and forced to carry out sexual acts on men.
Their previous study in February 2018 included details of a girl aged 17 telling the Met a number of men raped her after plying her with alcohol.
And an earlier inspectorate report in November 2016 told of two more victims, one of whom was a 16-year-old who said she was raped numerous times over a three-year period by a group of men in London who threatened to harm her and her family.
The other was aged 13, went missing overnight and was reported to police as being unsafe and in a room with three men.
The risk level was raised to ‘high’ and she was found but arrested for a minor assault on her mother while the three men were not interviewed, HMICFRS said.
Mr Khan had provided formal statements in response to each report, including calling the November 2016 one ‘deeply troubling’ and saying it was ‘simply unacceptable’ that too often ‘children in our city have been let down’.
His comments in response to the inspectorate’s findings in February this year, Mr Khan said it was ‘reassuring’ that the Met had made ‘significant improvements’.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp this week accused Mr Khan of ‘facilitating a cover-up’ by denying the existence of such gangs in the capital.
Mr Philip, MP for Croydon South, said: ‘It is shameful that the Mayor of London is claiming to have no indication that grooming gangs are operating in London despite personally responding to reports containing evidence of victims abused by grooming gangs in the city.
‘It is clear Sadiq Khan is facilitating a cover up.’
In a statement in response to the new criticisms, a spokesperson for the Mayor of London said: ‘The Mayor has always been clear that the safety of Londoners is his top priority and nowhere is this truer than in safeguarding children.
‘Sadiq is committed to doing all he can to protect children in London from organised criminal and sexual exploitation and bring perpetrators to justice.’
They said this included Mr Khan’s £15.6million Violence and Exploitation Support Service offering specialist support to young Londoners who are vulnerable, caught up in or being exploited by criminal gangs in the capital.
The spokesperson added: ‘We remain vigilant to emerging and changing threats and will continue to do everything we can to protect children in the capital from abuse, violence and exploitation in all its forms.’
In its latest statement, The Met said: ‘Since 2022, there have been significant improvements to how the Met identifies and investigates group-based offending, including training for 11,000 frontline officers and the expansion of our child exploitation teams.
‘In the last year we have solved three times more cases of child sexual exploitation – representing 134 more suspects charged.
‘As part of the national reinvestigation into group-based child sexual exploitation recommended by Baroness Casey, we are currently undertaking a review of approximately 9,000 cases covering a 15-year period.’
It comes as this week Labour’s grooming gangs inquiry was plunged into chaos following a series of resignations.
A number of abuse survivors stepped down from the inquiry’s victims and survivors liaison panel, levelling heavy criticism at the Home Office.
In her resignation letter, a woman known only as Elizabeth said the process felt like ‘a cover-up’ and had ‘created a toxic environment’ for survivors.
